“Ohh! Did you see that?”

Teresa startled. She turned her head and saw Joshua lying next to her in the grass, as he was following the course of a falling meteor.

He must have sneaked up on her. Teresa felt the anger in her stomach flare up agai—

Teresa tore herself from these memories, shaking her head in a daze. She absolutely didn’t want to remember that day. Just imagining that made her dizzy. By reflex, she had caught the shooting star with her fist; a black, lambent pearl, glistening brightly in the light.

Truth be told, this wasn’t just any pearl. Let me tell you a little bit about its history. Connoisseurs knew this specimen under the name “The Tear of Gluttony,” and with the name came countless dark tales. Tales of aristocrats who slipped on the tear and fell, breaking their neck. Tales of people who enriched themselves by selling it, only for that wealth to cause their demise. Even the case of a young child who had choked to death after the pearl had fallen in their soup. Eventually, these obscure occurrences caused it to become an exhibition piece in the Bloody Trails Museum & Archive.

And in that Museum, there lived a woman; One who could not speak and instead would write everything she had to say onto a small blackboard she carried around with her. This woman loved the museum, just as she loved everything inside.

Continuing the legacy of ruin surrounding the Tear of Gluttony, one day, a terrible fire broke loose in the wing where it was on display. The mute girl, in her foolishness, tried to save the item, and in so doing ended up a prisoner of the flames herself. Accepting her imminent death, she wanted to write one last message on her chalkboard to look at while succumbing to the heat, but before she could even come up with anything to note down, the Future already burst in, saving her and stealing most of the exhibits.

This however did not leave the Future unscathed: During her rescue attempt, a falling piece of hot debris squashed one of her arms. She had to cut it off.

After this, for about a hundred years, the Tear of Gluttony was safely stored in the Future’s shed, until it now found its way into Teresa’s hands, who, with a baffled and clueless expression, turned her head to my sister.

“Hey, is that yours?” she asked, offering the pearl.

No reaction. She retracted her hand. At the same moment, my sister stood up and left.

How weird, Teresa thought.

“… so it honestly ended up being one of the cooler events of our Iceland tour,” the bartender said, closing some sort of story Teresa had missed.

“Yes, I agree. Geysers are amazing,” the woman with black hair affirmed. “Reminds me of this girl I used to date…”

“Anyway, I can really recommend going there. Did you know that…”

Teresa fell into thought. Eventually, the girl came back from the restroom and her friend ordered her a new drink. Teresa again tried attracting the attention of her antisocial neighbour by waving at her, but got ignored.

Now, she felt weirdly agitated. Halinka stood in front of her, polishing some glasses that clearly didn’t require any more polishing, and smiled at Teresa. “Sorry, but have you ever seen this pearl?” Teresa asked in a spur-of-the-moment decision. Halinka leaned forward to inspect it, but shook her head. Just when Teresa wanted to give it to her to put it into lost-and-found, a female voice sounded to her left.

“Uhm, do you have a moment?”

A freckled woman wearing a red scarf had walked up to the counter. She squeezed herself between the counter and a table occupied by some young man brooding over an engineer’s college book.

“Yes?” Halinka asked and issued the same professional warm smile to her which she had previously shown Teresa.

“You don’t happen to have seen my hourglass?” she asked nervously, clearly conscious of the fact that this sounded a little out of place. “I had it on my table. Right there.” She pointed to a spot next to the entrance to the restroom. “It’s pretty small, like something you’d put on a keychain. Please?”

Something in her voice made Teresa feel pitiful. That woman clearly cared about her hourglass for some reason. She seemed like she was about to cry.

Halinka tried to process the request, but didn’t even have time to shake her head before the young man next to them said: “You mean one like this?”

He pulled an hourglass out of his bag and showed it to her. The woman looked at it, a bit confused, nodded, then shook her head. “It looks a lot like mine, actually. Although mine isn’t green but blue. How come you…?”

“I bought it at a fair.”

Her eyes brightened, and she sat down in front of him. “You don’t mean, you’ve also been there? On that holiday at the Doefill?”

“Two years ago, yes.”

She let out a heart-felt but quiet laugh. “I can’t believe it. We were both there, then.”

He nodded warmly. “To be fair, it was completely flooded with people. Wasn’t it like 200.000 who just came to watch the light show?”

The woman nodded. “But there were less people in the market where these were sold,” she said, falling silent for a moment when she looked at the hourglass in his hand.

August 22nd, 2015

Hundreds of small hourglasses were hanging above Sophie’s head, arranged in long but untidy rows, ordered by colour. She decided on a blue one, and after buying it strolled slowly, quaintly, next to the Doefill. The river flowed gently this evening, since there was little wind.

Initially her plan had been to come here with some of her friends, but she flaked on them at the last moment by avoiding the meeting spot. Hopefully she wouldn’t run into them by accident.

The city was renowned for its huge clock tower. It was so famous that once a year, they’d hold a holiday for its sake – the so-called yearly ‘Day of Time.’ This year was its 250th anniversary, so they expanded the festivities. Part of that was a light show scheduled at the largest bridge of the city, with the help of ships sailing through it. Also, because of an old tradition, the entirety of the river had lamps in it that coloured the water red.

Thinking of the upcoming light show cheered Sophie up a bit while she wandered through the crowd between the souvenir shops huddled together beneath the plane trees. At the end of the plaza, she saw a stairs leading down to a dark path right next to the river.

The show was soon to start. Sophie decided to evade other people by watching from down there. Plus, she thought it might make for a good view. She walked next to the river for about ten minutes, passed several small alders until she saw one that seemed very easy to climb, right at the darkest spot between two lanterns.

She sat down on the first big branch leaving the tree, leaned against the bark while staring down at the red gleaming river, and started crying.

At first, she just made a sad grimace as she couldn’t hold back any more, then she pressed her hands on her eyes. Soon, she let out sobs. Down here, where no one could hear her, because all the sounds she made were overshadowed by the people talking and laughing above, by the boats driving across the river and the city noises from further away; and where she was sitting entirely, completely alone, her loud sobbing actually felt liberating.

It didn’t matter what she did here. That was why only now, after bottling up her feelings for far too long, she was able to let go. Something she would have never allowed herself to do in any other circumstances. Being seen like this; weak, and with her make-up all messed up, crying her heart out over stupid reasons, it would be the end of her. If that happened, she might have just died on the spot.

“Uhm, sorry… Do you need a tissue or something?”

Someone she hadn’t noticed before rose up from the bench below the tree. It was a young boy, maybe thirteen, looking up at her confused. He’d probably been asleep. Sophie felt like she was about to die on the spot.

To her surprise, he actually did have tissues, and rose to give them to her. She took them, snorted into them, wiped her face with them, and tried to do the best she could to tidy herself up.

“Thanks,” Sophie mumbled, embarrassed but appreciative, although her voice came out much lower than she expected.

“No problem,” the boy answered. He looked at the river, then back to her and made the impression of being a little lost. “I was just lying here because I fell asleep waiting for the show,” he said. He still sounded tired.

Sophie chuckled. “No need to explain yourself to me. Sleep wherever you want, I’m not your parent. In fact, I’m sorry for waking you up.”

He nodded and Sophie saw his feet twitch. He was obviously thinking about leaving, but then he asked: “Uhm, what’s wrong?”

“Long story,” Sophie said.

“… So?”

Was he for real…? On the other hand… She sighed. How was she supposed to even explain this? Especially, how was she supposed to explain any of it without sounding incredibly whiny? In thinking that, she became aware of her awkward situation. But, oh well. Now that she was here, she might as well say it.

“I’m 25 now,” she started.

“What, 25?! You look like you are 16 or something!” she got interrupted immediately. Her face turned hot red but gladly, it was probably too dark for the boy to notice.

“Let’s see, where do I begin… oh right. Well, I’m 25 now,” she repeated as if the previous interaction had never happened. “When I was done with school I went travelling for a year because I didn’t know what to do yet. Then I went to college for half a year, but I lost motivation and stopped. And then I worked part-time for two years to save some money to find something to do somewhere else in the world, but I had to stop three months ago when I realized I just wasn’t good with children. And now my parents are angry at me and won’t support me any longer. And I still have no idea what I want to do with my life.”

Somehow, the darkness made it much easier for her to talk about all of that.

“Sounds like you have a buttload of privilege, huh.”

Sophie gulped. Was that what they taught in schools nowadays? He wasn’t wrong, though. Her parents weren’t poor by any stretch, and travelling the world for a year is probably not something everyone could afford.

He continued, unfazed: “I already know what I want to do later. It will take quite a long time, but once I am as old as you” – Sophie felt like starting to cry again – “I wanna be a lighting engineer. Like my uncle. He’s actually helping out in the festival today, so I came to see it. And he told me this was like some unknown super secret perfect place to watch. Cool, right?”

This was probably the quality of counselling Sophie should have expected after confiding to a random, complete stranger.

“I mean, just look at the people watching a light show. They get goosebumps. Stunned by the spectacle. Afterwards, they will talk about it to their friends, families. They might never forget this day. And I would love it if people experienced this kind of thing because of me.”

He looked at her, a bit too self-confident of an expression on his face for Sophie’s taste. His face was thin, he seemed sporty.

“On the other hand,” he said, “I can well imagine that other people might have difficulties coming up with what they wanna do with their lives. My big brother was also a total loser when he was your age. But now he lives abroad, has a boyfriend and owns a llama farm.” He made a short pause. “Don’t ask me how he did that. I have no clue. Not the farm-thing but the boyfriend-thing, I mean. He always kinda looked like a llama.”

Sophie laughed. For a while, they just watched the tiny waves in the water, but then, the light show started, and thousands of light speckles appeared from all sides of the bridge. Dubstep music started playing, too.

“To be completely honest with you,” the boy said as if that wasn’t what he’d been doing the whole time, “At this point, what does it even matter? Just do something that sounds cool. You’ve got nothing to lose, right. Speaking of cool: I’ve been reading this book about the oceans these days. You know what they say? They say we know less about the ocean than we know about the universe. Bullshit if you ask me. The logic just doesn’t check out. The ocean is part of the universe, after all. So how are we supposed to know less about it, when it’s part of it? Like saying we know less about wood than we know about trees.”

He shook his head. “Anyway, both the universe and the ocean are kinda cool, aren’t they. Did you know that there’s an earth plate subducting about 300 kilometres off our shore? Meaning there is this huge rift, the Magdalena Trench, almost nine thousand metres deep. Nobody was able to go there yet, though, all efforts have failed so far. I bet there are some of the strangest things in the world to be found there. And, if not there, then what about the deepest trench in the earth?”

“Marianas Trench?”

He nodded gravely. “I bet there is some crazy shit going on down there.”

Sophie laughed. “Would be nice if we could go and check.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. You absolutely can go and check, you know?”

“What? How?”

“You tell me.”

Sophie sighed. “Well, I guess by… building a submarine to go here?”

“Sounds like a plan, doesn’t it.”

“It’s impossible,” said Sophie. “I’m never going to do that. I’m not an engineer.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

January 27th, 2017

“Everything okay?” the man asked when a tear dropped from the woman’s eye onto the desk. She seemed surprised by it herself.

How cute, thought Teresa while watching the both of them from the corner of her eye.

“Yeah, I’m fine, I just— huh?!”

My sister bumped into Sophie, who then turned around to look. Immediately the big, green eyes entrapped her; and neither she nor the man seemed to notice my sister picking up Sophie’s tear with a pipette. Right afterwards, she walked away, and the two of them immediately lost interest in her, as if she had never existed.

Teresa however did very much notice what had just transpired, and did not lose interest after the fact. Instead, completely baffled, she tried for a second to understand what she just witnessed.

With no care in the world, the scarfed woman continued: “Sorry, I just got a little nostalgic.” She smiled at Tom and pointed at his book. “You are an engineer, aren’t you? My name’s Sophie.”

“Two terms to go, then I will be one, yes,” he answered. “I’m at Atlas University. Tom.”

“I go there, too,” smiled Sophie. She hesitated for a second, then continued: “Although I’m taking it slow, since I’m also working part-time.”

“No harm in that. What’s your major?”

“Marine biology.” She sounded pretty proud of that. “I’m… well, I’m working on a project to probe the Magdalena Trench.”

“Oh! You know, I’ve actually heard of this project. My prof mentioned it to me. Because I’m considering looking into marine robotics. I built some prototypes.”

Sophie’s eyes lit up. “Then, join us!”

What kind of crazy coincidence is that?, thought Teresa when she heard the door to the bar open. She turned around, just to see both the white haired girl and her friend leave the scene. Teresa furled her brows. The seats next to her were empty now. There was just one thing. One thing left on the seat right next to her. Standing there, on the counter.

It was a small hourglass with blue edges.

That sight, for whatever reason, caused fireworks in Teresa’s head, as if a dozen things suddenly fell into place and out of it at the same time.

She shook her head, ready to get a headache at any moment. What the hell was going on here? Something wasn’t right. Teresa slowly rose up, pulling a crumpled-up banknote from her pocket to drop it next to her empty glass. Then, she rose, and turned to leave the bar.

The noises around crashed about her mind; the muddled words, the clanging of glasses, the creaking of the wooden chairs, making it even harder for her to focus.

Climbing the stairs outside of the bar, Teresa heard the voice of the talkative girl from earlier.

“What the hell was that?! That’s not anything like what you’d planned, right? … Oh my god. Are you serious? … Yeah, I bet you are. Sorry to hear she’s resisting. She was really cute, by the way. What did you say about how old she was? 28, huh? … Let me see if she will be able to resist me, too! … Oh, come on! I’ve got this! I really liked her… What do you mean, of course she didn’t do much, I’m talking about her style.”

Teresa’s stomach contracted. Was that woman on the phone? Who was she talking to?

She followed both of them outside, keeping a bit of a distance as they walked; the talkative one wildly gesturing, happily jumping around, as the other just stoically walked with tiny steps, as if she was about to fall over from exhaustion. Suddenly, the black-haired girl started laughing. “I see, poor you. Well, you managed to improvise and get another tear instead. So it wasn’t all for nothing. … I’ll take care of that professor girl for you, don’t worry. You think she recognized you? … What was her name again?”

“Teresa,” Teresa answered sharply. The woman turned around surprised.

“Teresa?” she reiterated.

“Yes. I am Teresa Hargrove.”

There was a short pause, as if she had to process the information. “Teresa Hargrove. I see. That makes a lot of sense then. I guess my work load just doubled!”

“Whatever are you on about?”

“Don’t sweat the details, sweetie. Come here for a bit, we have to talk.”

For some reason, Teresa had the immediate urge to do the opposite and run away, but her gaze fell on the other person, who had also turned around by now. Their eyes met for the first time. These green, large, strong eyes. For just a whimsical moment, Teresa felt like she was ready to do anything for her, no matter what she asked.

“Sis told me about you, Teresa. Happy to meet you.”

Were these students of hers? Did she know them from university somehow? Nothing rang a bell. It was not like Teresa had any hobbies she could have known them from, either. These people were complete strangers to her.

“Who are you two?” she eventually asked, looking at the white haired person and ignoring the other’s ramblings. “And… No, but, none of this makes sense. What happened down there, anyway? You stole that hourglass thing when you went to the bathroom, didn’t you? Then these two students started talking. And it just happened to be that they both want to go undersea?”

Sure, marine biology was a big thing in Atlas University, as they lived on a large island, and yet it seemed like an awkward coincidence.

“And then she cried, and you gathered her… tears? Like. This makes no sense. Even saying it out loud just makes me think I’m crazy. Because… they might have never met without you stealing the hourglass. And you picking up the tear just seems like you wanted to get it from the start. It all seems so… orchestrated?”

The black haired woman shrugged her shoulders. “No way. Orchestrated? Never! … You could be dreaming,” she insinuated with a teasing voice.

No, Teresa couldn’t be. She had already made three reality checks in the meantime. However, she decided not to mention that, and she didn’t have time to, anyway, since the woman immediately continued: “Anyway, you want to know who we are? Let me enlighten you. I am… Well, how do I say this… I’m Wisdom. And this cutie right here —” she grabbed her acquaintance by her shoulders and grinningly presented her to Teresa, “— Changes the fate of every being and thing in this world. She is the Future.”

“I see,” said Teresa dryly.

Was this a joke? Had the two fled from a cosplay convention?

Inside her mind, Teresa was almost screaming. She wanted to know what was going on here. She had never experienced something this stupidly peculiar. This was the first time in… forever that she witnessed something she couldn’t immediately explain. And at the same time, it was something so minor and bizarre.

“You look a bit unsatisfied,” said Wisdom.

“As I said. None of this makes sense,” she replied.

“And you want to understand what happened?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, that’s good. Come to Captivity Plaza, tomorrow at 9:30 in the morning. She’ll meet you there.”

Teresa looked at her confused, so she continued: “Look. Sis is out there every day doing things like she did today. Changing fates. Making people cry. Getting herself into trouble. Stealing tears. Whatever you wanna call it. You’ll find it enthralling, I promise. I just need someone to babysit her so she doesn’t end up in the dump. If you do it I can go back to doing what I like doing the most: Sitting on the couch eating potato chips, loving myself.”

“W—”

“Look, just do me this favour, okay? Or rather, do her the favour. You won’t regret it. Surely.”

Teresa felt manipulated. Compelled. Frankly, coerced. As if someone took her hand and made her sign some damning papers. Wisdom waved her goodbye and both of them just left.

Of course, Teresa didn’t have time for any of that nonsense. She was a professor of an esteemed university, after all. She had lots of things to do.

Well, truth be told, not really. She hadn’t given a single lecture in over 6 months. And today had been the first day in weeks on which she had managed to even leave her house. Life was tiring. And so was this.

Why did this end up having to have happened the one day she decided to go out? Something told her it couldn’t have been a coincidence.

Anyway, Teresa told herself, there is no way I’m going to that place tomorrow. She decided to go home, wrack her brain a bit to come up with a satisfying solution to that puzzle, and then go back to sleep forever. And she promised to herself over and over again to stay by that decision, and absolutely not go to this suspicious meet-up the next day, as it was clearly, obviously, surely, nothing but a heinous trap.